From the floor of my little tiny flat in South Kensington

This is my first message from the UK. What a strange day.

Packing to come out here took far, far longer than I thought it ever would. I was up all night folding clothes and repacking bags - and it all barely fit into five tightly packed suitcases. And the whole process took about 10 hours longer than I thought it would. The main thing I forgot was that arranging ALL of your belongings to take them overseas takes a bit more planning than packing one small bag to go on a business trip, which I have become quite good at. Now that I'm actually sitting in my corporate housing apartment here in London, I feel like I brought WAY too much stuff - not necessarily because I brought a lot of things I don't need, but mainly because there just isn't realistically enough room in the apartment for a lot of it. I'm starting to understand what my coworker meant when he said "you'll learn to get by on a lot less out here". I can already feel my brain regressing back to the lifestyle I lived when I was in Sendai - incredibly simple. Oh AND I'm apparently paying 30 pounds a month for an internet connection that is spotty at best. Jesus, this is annoying.

At least my flight here was nice. I was in "Upper Class" on Virgin Atlantic, the name of which I find just ridiculously British and pretentious, but it was pretty nice. Each passenger gets their own seat/bed and just a constant stream of food and drink. It was not as nice as first class on JAL, but it was enjoyable. I spent most of the flight either trying to sleep, eating British food, trying to read about London, or watching The Dark Knight or Wall-E. I brought both DVDs (Wall-E courtesy of Jen), but they were somehow also both in the queue of 12 movies the in-flight system had.

It's funny - when we were about to take off I was incredibly sad, and upon landing I was incredibly excited. But now I'm just sort of trying to adjust to the annoying inconvenience of this little apartment I'm in right now and how to make it all work. Maybe I'll just move to a new apartment next weekend - haha. I laugh, but I'm only half-joking. To be fair, this apartment isn't bad - it has separate rooms for the bed, the living area, the kitchen, and the bathroom, though the rooms are all fairly small. But I just wish the space the apartment had was used more efficiently and that there was more closet space - I'm going to be living amongst piles upon piles of clothes here.

And right now I'm trying to decide if I should take a nap (not good for my jetlag!) or go buy toilet paper. Can you believe this apartment is fully furnished and even has some food available in the kitchen, but there is no toilet paper?? Ridiculous.